Oven appliances generally include a cabinet that defines one or more cooking chambers for baking or broiling food items therein. Oven appliances also generally include a self-cleaning feature for cleaning the one or more cooking chambers. To heat the cooking chambers for baking or for self-cleaning, oven appliances include one or more heating elements positioned at a top portion, bottom portion, or both of the cooking chambers. Some oven appliances also include a convection heating element and fan for convection cooking cycles. The heating element or elements may be used for various cycles of the oven appliance, such as a preheat cycle, a cooking cycle, or a self-cleaning cycle.
The time required to preheat a typical electric oven appliance to 350° F. generally varies from about nine to about fifteen minutes, depending on the oven size and the oven rack type. The required preheat time may be a nuisance to a user of the oven appliance waiting to cook her food. However, because the power that may be input to an electric oven appliance is limited by the amount of current the appliance can pull from the breaker, adding heating elements or using multiple heating elements at one time may not be a viable solution. Moreover, in oven appliances having two cooking chambers, the power available to each cooking chamber is approximately one half of the power available to a single cooking chamber oven appliance. Thus, double oven appliances generally are limited as to additional sources of heat that may be input into a cooking chamber to decrease the time required to preheat the cooking chamber.
Accordingly, an oven appliance with features for minimizing the preheat time without exceeding the wattage available to the oven appliance would be useful. Further, a method for operating an oven appliance to minimize the preheat time without exceeding the wattage available to the oven appliance would be beneficial.